


Unseen, Unheard

by galaxysoup



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, F/M, Horror, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-29
Updated: 2008-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells Ianto she doesn’t remember anything between Canary Wharf and what she eventually learns is the Hub, but she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unseen, Unheard

She can recall the Battle. Parts of it, anyway – the running and screaming parts. She remembers being caught - breaking her nails against the Cyberman’s faceplate, kicking it in the crotch and feeling like she’d shattered her entire foot.

She remembers Ianto, his face slack with too much terror, too much carnage, his feet sliding on blood and what she’s pretty sure were _actual guts_ as he dragged her through the destroyed halls.

She remembers the Machine, cold and hard at the edge of her mind, like a dam waiting to burst.

****

It takes Ianto a little while to get the hang of the medications, and for a while she spends most of her time either screaming or unconscious.

Eventually, when Ianto’s learned how to walk the line between worrying that she’ll be in pain and worrying he’ll kill her with an overdose, she stays lucid for long enough to ask him what she looks like.

He tells her he doesn’t care, he loves her no matter what. She tells him it’s curiosity, not insecurity.

It’s somehow very Ianto that he manages with a large mirror instead of a remote camera and a computer link-up, but that’s why she loves him.

She looks at her metal body, horrified that the Cybermen seem to have taken inspiration from the sci-fi pinup over Gerard Aichele’s desk. They’ve even given her little metal high-heeled boots.

“I think Cybermen are definitely male,” she croaks, and she knows they’re going to be all right because she can still make Ianto laugh. It’s okay, for now, that it’s a little bit hysterical.

****

She worked in Engineering before the Battle. Even during the fight and the conversion process that she _doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t_ remember, there was a part of her mind that was busily dissecting Cybermen and conducting imaginary tests.

When she tells Ianto how to interface human medical technology with the Cyber conversion unit there is a moment, just a moment, where they stare at each other and both feel dread yawning deep and cold, twisting the world into a shape where the Battle never ended.

And then Ianto says, “I think I’m glad now that you spent so much time in your lab,” and the world snaps back into place.

If they find that funnier than it actually is, it’s just because if they didn’t laugh they’d start screaming and never stop, and if Ianto clutches her hand a little too tightly and stares into her eyes a little too long, it’s just because they’ve both been through a very stressful time and they’re glad to still have each other.

She clings to that, and absolutely does not imagine that the cold heaviness at the back of her head has started to tick.

****

Sometimes, she wakes up to find Ianto next to her – not hovering attentively, but curled up on the floor in utter exhaustion with his head pillowed on his suit jacket. Other times he’s pulled a chair over next to her bed (not a conversion unit, _not_ ) and has fallen asleep, the hard ridges of her new body leaving marks on the side of his face.

Sometimes, when she sees him there, she’s terrified that he’s dead and she’s murdered him while he slept. She thinks _Let me die. Please, just let me die. This is killing both of us._

But she doesn’t say anything, because clinging to life past all hope is a human thing to do, and she _will not_ let the Cybermen beat them.

They might have to fight to make it to the end of each day and they might be struggling not to suffocate under the weight of the horror of it all, but they survived Canary Wharf. They’re bloody well strong enough to survive this, too.

****

The doctor is little and grabby. She can see Ianto working hard to conceal his distaste and, frankly, the man is doing more to make her feel less human than any degree of conversion ever could. But he’s a necessary evil, so neither of them says anything.

They take her upstairs. Ianto paces nervously. The doctor taps away at his keyboard, and tells Ianto to expect her to die.

She hates him a little bit more for the look in Ianto’s -

Something changes, suddenly, deep in the back of her head where the metal lies in wait. Everything is hard and cold and _hurts_ and what’s left of her mind is crawling and shuddering with revulsion, because the Battle was never over, it’s been going on this whole time and she hasn’t been fighting for her life or even for Ianto’s, but for the existence of the thing inside her.

Lisa screams, but only the Machine hears.


End file.
